Dominant Asian Female Colleague Destroys my Career.

Swish looked at her critically, appearing to recognize her expression. Her own smile faltered slightly. "Did you..."

"Is that Larya?" called a familiar voice from deeper in the cave. The voice had a hoarseness to it Larya didn't remember. "Are they finally here?"

Larya started walking into the cave. Suisshu walked beside her, her expression turning into one of fear. Larya beat her staff on the ground with each step, trying to use the pounding rhythm to give herself a bit of strength. She had a message to deliver. She couldn't cry. She'd cried enough already over the last week.

Mier sat at the back of the cave. The doppelganger currently wore the form of a young man with dusky skin and a slightly beaklike nose. He grinned up at Larya, though as he was half-naked, the smile was somewhat undercut by the hideous rainbow-blooded wound in his gut. "Boy, you're a sight for sore eyes. And where's the grump?"

"That's a new form," Larya said. She looked around. "Where's, um..."

Mier raised his hand, showing a large ant with rainbow-colored eyes resting in the palm. "It's practicing shapeshifting. They start early, doppelganger babes."

Larya blinked. For a moment, the enormity of her message fell apart with the simple strangeness of everything associated with Mier. Mier's baby was a currently genderless creature that could as easily take the form of a giant ant as it could a human. Mier himself was currently in the form of a man, and that was easily the least strange thing about it all.

"Snatch didn't follow, huh?" Mier rolled his eyes. "Typical. Well, he helped. That's enough. I appreciated even that much from the cranky jerk."

"M-Mier." Larya swallowed. "I-"

"You didn't get it."

Larya stared at Mier.

Mefore her eyes, Mier's form slowly shifted into a colorless shape that almost blended into the stone. This was, as best as Larya understood it, the doppelganger's native form. "I figured," they said. "I'm really good at reading people, remember?"

Larya glanced to her left. Suisshu was covering her eyes, clearly trying to hold back sobs.

She looked back at Mier. Mier's smile was brittle and weak. "It's okay. We... we knew it was a longshot. There really aren't that many antidotes, and the elves were always just a guess."

Larya looked between the direction of the cave entrance, just out of sight, and the ailing shapeshifter. She bit her lip and tried again. "Mier, I'm so, so..."

"Look, don't worry about it." Mier rubbed their eyes. "We knew it might not happen. We made plans. Chanj will be alright without me."

"But-"

Larya heard voices from outside the cave. She turned in amazement, peering down the passage. Who was that Swish was talking to? It couldn't be-Holy shit, it is.

"Lim?"

The catgirl pranced into the cave, ran to Larya, and grabbed her in a hug. "Larya!" she squealed with delight.

"Um, hello, Lim." Larya frowned. "Look, this isn't really-" She saw Snatch trailing after, looking rather like a cat in a dog kennel. "What... what are you doing here?"

Lim pulled back, her expression turning serious. "Larya, we can make it right."

Larya stared blankly at her. Snatch looked equally unsure, though he didn't look quite as surprised as Larya felt. The fox glanced between the three of them, looking about as perplexed as a fox could manage.

"You can?" Larya said at last.

"Sure!" Lim beamed. "You just need to Initiate."

Suisshu's fur went on end. In seconds, she had returned to human form and was glaring at Lim. "What? You're not qualified for that!"

Larya saw Lim's eyes widen, just a fraction of a millimeter for a fraction of an instant. Then they narrowed as she turned to Swish. "Huh? Uh, do so, sexy fox lady."